The Business of Life. Robert W. Chambers
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the distant locomotive whistled, and the vista of wet rails began to glisten red in the swift approach.
"I don't want you to go to town alone on that train," he said abruptly.
"What?" in utter surprise.
"Will you let me go with you, Miss Nevers?"
"Nonsense! I wander about everywhere alone. Please don't spoil it all. Don't even go aboard to find a seat for me."
The long train thundered by, brakes gripping, slowed, stopped. She sprang aboard, turned on the steps and offered her hand:
"Good-bye, Mr. Desboro."
"To-morrow?" he asked.
"Yes."
They exchanged no further words; she stood a moment on the platform, as the cars glided slowly past him and on into the rainy night. All the way to New York she remained motionless in the corner of the seat, her cheek resting against her gloved palm, thinking of what had happened—closing her blue eyes, sometimes, to bring it nearer and make more real a day of life already ended.
CHAPTER IV
When the doorbell rang the maid of all work pushed the button and stood waiting at the top of the stairs. There was a pause, a moment's whispering, then light footsteps flying through the corridor, and:
"Where on earth have you been for a week?" asked Cynthia Lessler, coming into Jacqueline's little parlour, where the latter sat knitting a white wool skating jacket for herself.
Jacqueline laid aside the knitting and greeted her visitor with a warm, quick embrace.
"Oh, I've been everywhere," she said. "Out in Westchester, mostly. To-day being Sunday, I'm at home."
"What were you doing in the country, sweetness?"
"Business."
"What kind?"
"Oh, cataloguing a collection. Take the armchair and sit near the stove, dear. And here are the chocolates. Put your feet on the fender as I do. It was frightfully cold in Westchester yesterday—everything frozen solid—and we—I skated all over the flooded fields and swamps. It was simply glorious, Cynthia——"
"I thought you were out there on business," remarked Cynthia dryly.
"I was. I merely took an hour at noon for luncheon."
"Did you?"
"Certainly. Even a bricklayer has an hour at noon to himself."
"Whose collection are you cataloguing?"
"It belongs to a Mr. Desboro," said Jacqueline carelessly.
"Where is it?"
"In his house—a big, old house about five miles from the station——"
"How do you get there?"
"They send a car for me——"
"Who?"
"They—Mr. Desboro."
"They? Is he plural?"
"Don't be foolish," said Jacqueline. "It is his car and his collection, and I'm having a perfectly good time with both."
"And with him, too? Yes?"
"If you knew him you wouldn't talk that way."
"I know who he is."
"Do you?" said Jacqueline calmly.
"Yes, I do. He's the 'Jim' Desboro whose name you see in the fashionable columns. I know something about that young man," she added emphatically.
Jacqueline looked up at her with dawning displeasure. Cynthia, undisturbed, bit into a chocolate and waved one pretty hand:
"Read the Tattler, as I do, and you'll see what sort of a man your young man is."
"I don't care to read such a——"
"I do. It tells you funny things about society. Every week or two there's something about him. You can't exactly understand it—they put it in a funny way—but you can guess. Besides, he's always going around town with Reggie Ledyard, and Stuyve Van Alstyne, and—Jack Cairns——"
"Don't speak that way—as though you usually lunched with them. I hate it."
"How do you know I don't lunch with some of them? Besides everybody calls them Reggie, and Stuyve, and Jack——"
"Everybody except their mothers, probably. I don't want to hear about them, anyway."
"Why not, darling?"
"Because you and I don't know them and never will——"
Cynthia said maliciously: "You may meet them through your friend, Jimmy Desboro——"
"That is the limit!" exclaimed Jacqueline, flushing; and her pretty companion leaned back in her armchair and laughed until Jacqueline's unwilling smile began to glimmer in her wrath-darkened eyes.
"Don't torment me, Cynthia," she said. "You know quite well that it's a business matter with me entirely."
"Was it a business matter with that Dawley man? You had to get me to go with you into that den of his whenever you went at all."
Jacqueline shrugged and resumed her knitting: "What a horrid thing he was," she murmured.
Cynthia assented philosophically: "But most men bother a girl sooner or later," she concluded. "You don't read about it in novels, but it's true. Go down town and take dictation for a living. It's an education in how to look out for yourself."
"It's a rotten state of things," said Jacqueline under her breath.
"Yes. It's funny, too. So many men are that way. What do they care? Do you suppose we'd be that way, too, if we were men?"
"No. There are nice men, too."
"Yes—dead ones."
"Nonsense!"
"With very few exceptions, Jacqueline. There are horrid, horrid ones, and nice, horrid ones, and dead ones and dead ones—but only a few nice, nice ones. I've known some. You think your Mr. Desboro is one, don't you?"
"I haven't thought about him——"
"Honestly, Jacqueline?"
"I tell you I haven't! He's nice to me. That's all I know."
"Is he too nice?"
"No. Besides, he's under his own roof. And it depends on a girl, anyway."
"Not always. If we behave ourselves we're dead ones; if we don't we'd better be. Isn't it a rotten deal, Jacqueline! Just one fresh man after another dropped into the discards because he gets too gay. And being employed by the kind who'd never marry us spoils us for the others. You could marry one of your clients, I suppose, but I never could in a million years."
"You and I will never marry such men," said Jacqueline coolly. "Perhaps we wouldn't if they asked us."
"You might. You're educated and bright, and—you look the part, with all the things you know—and your trips to Europe—and the kind of beauty yours is. Why not? If I were you," she added, "I'd kill a man who thought me good enough to hold hands with, but not good enough to marry."
"I don't hold hands," observed Jacqueline scornfully.
"I do. I've done